


Kaleidoscope

by grindly



Category: Batman (Comics), Batman - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:55:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,186
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5548142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/grindly/pseuds/grindly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scramble the world until things are right again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Kaleidoscope

Everything is the same but different. Dick opens his eyes and he's on a bed with Barbara Gordon in the spring of 2003. They're curled up together watching dumb music videos on tv. Barbara lays on her stomach and kicks her legs and everytime she laughs, the butterflies in Dick's stomach go haywire. He's a short little 14 year old and she's a year older than him but she is tall and graceful and he loves her. 

Between commercial breaks they talk about the kids they'll have. 

 

Barbara plays along and names her first three future daughters after renowned female scientists and her favourite authors. She stops herself and tells Dick that they're probably taking it a little fast by jumping straight to the children. So Dick asks her to marry him and Barbara laughs like it's ridiculous because they're just kids, but she doesn't say no. She sits up and looks at him and for a while they're both quiet. Dick is terrified and embarrassed about his feelings. Barbara reaches out and takes his hand. She squeezes it and Dick looks up and then she kisses him. 

It ends, as things do. Dick continues his life in memory of it. 

He opens his eyes and he's on a yacht in Cuba, chasing the hope of feeling even a fraction of what he had before. He knows he's made a mistake because Kori and him have been at odds since they got there. It's not even that they're arguing. He could have dealt with arguing. The problem is that Kori doesn't even look at him. Dick can't figure out if it was something he said earlier or if this is how Kori has always been. Dick wants things to be the same but they aren't. Not this time around. 

He stares out gloomily at crystal-clear waters and a clear blue sky. They have sex, but when they finish up, Kori slides out of bed. She turns and in her foreign accent, she undermines all that Dick is by telling him he is too sentimental.  
Dick reaches out to hold her hand but she slips away, the sheets falling off her body. Dick lies there and all he can hear is the sound of the seagulls and waves lapping against the boat. He turns over in bed and lands in a swath of sunlight.

Dick opens his eyes and it's autumn and he's in a loft apartment in Berlin. Everything in the city runs like clockwork and Lucas Trent is the only thing that doesn't.That is how Dick ends up occupying a space in his bed and in his life.  
They meet in a bar tucked far away from any tourists, because Dick made the mistake of looking for a genuine experience. Lucas is much older and he is immediately flirtatious and sleazy. He is also the only other American in the vicinity and at the start, this is enough for Dick. He ends up getting swept along for the ride

The trip stops being a series of hurdles, language barriers and misunderstandings and starts being something that Dick never asked for. Lucas can speak German perfectly. Dick lives for those few months without struggle. He gets pulled along to Oktoberfest and Industrial concerts and exclusive nightclubs full of other expat layabouts. People talk to Dick and Dick tries to pull out his translation book to reply but Lucas is always cutting in, speaking for him, over him. Lucas makes admiring comments about Dick and treats him like he's something he's won. The language is unfamiliar but Dick can read body language, can understand sly glances and gestures and touches. Dick shuts up. 

He says nothing as Lucas converses with local artists and intellectuals, one hand around a beer stein and the other cupping Dick's ass. Amid the throng of conversation, Dick finds himself looking out towards something else, wondering where he'd gone wrong. Lucas prods him and asks him what he's thinking about in a condescending way. Dick lies and mumbles that it's nothing. He desperately wants to be open about his feelings, but he knows now that everything that bothers him is everything that Lucas is. 

Dick waits for a good enough excuse to end it, and fortunately the excuse comes quickly and makes Dick's job very easy. Lucas's husband calls.

In the early morning, Dick shoves his clothes into a suitcase and hails a taxi in grammatically-incorrect German. He catches the first flight back home and lands in Bludhaven of all places, because the flight was cheaper.

Maybe it's that he's not ready to go back to Gotham with his tail between his legs, but for some reason he decides to stay.  
The leaves are gone, trees have withered and become skeletons. It gets darker earlier and a cold chill seeps in. For a very long time, Dick opens his eyes and sees absolutely nothing. He falls between the cracks between What Happened and What Comes Next. He wishes he could go back to a hundred different life eras, even the imperfect ones, but nothing fits anymore.

Years pass.

Dick opens his eyes. Jonathan stares back with the most striking gaze he has ever seen in his life.

The bedroom window frames the first big blizzard of the season; outside looks like a freshly shaken snowglobe. Dick has moved back to Gotham and for the first time in a long time, he feels like he's done something right. He's himself again. He spends the morning with Jonathan; in the bedroom that had belonged to Dick since he was a peppy little thing straight out of the circus. Downstairs, Dick can hear the patter of his siblings and various pets around and he ignores it. Instead he stretches his arms out and wraps them around Jonathan before tugging him close, like a kraken swallowing a ship. He holds on just as tight. At his core, Dick is an idealist and a hopeless romantic and Jonathan brings out all of that. He doesn't want to let this go, not now, not ever, and not even in the wake of Alfred calling everyone down for breakfast

It takes a few more calls before Jonathan wriggles slightly and tells Dick that they should probably go.

Dick just looks at him with a lazy grin and kisses him on the head. He tells Jonathan that it's comfortable, even though Jonathan looked like he was getting crushed.

Jonathan manages to get an arm out of Dick's stranglehold-hug and he puts his glasses on. He reminds Dick that there is going to be cereal and Dick rolls out of bed, motivated by the promise of cereal. They head downstairs and Jonathan follows behind him. Dick takes slight pride in the way Jonathan quietly clings to him and follows him and snuggles against him. He is tiny and beautiful and fits against Dick perfectly. They sit at the table. Jonathan meets his eyes and holds his hand. Dick squeezes it back and for the first time in a long time, Dick is in a place that he doesn't mind staying in.


End file.
